Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: El Salvador scraps presidential term limits, Ecuador hosts the women’s Copa América, and housing issues at COP30 put pressure on Brazil.
Trump Grants Bukele Carte Blanche
Nayib Bukele’s concentration of power in El Salvador is a familiar story by now. Since taking office in 2019, the Salvadoran president has suspended due process rights in the name of fighting crime, carrying out mass arrests of people said to be suspected gang members and jailing critics.
Still, Bukele’s popularity has remained high, in large part because homicide rates have dropped during his tenure. His legislative majority in 2021 moved to swap out most judges in El Salvador’s top court, which then ruled that Bukele could run for a second term despite a constitutional ban on consecutive reelection. He was reelected last year.
On July 31, the legislature took a dramatic step toward potentially prolonging Bukele’s rule, approving a constitutional reform to scrap presidential term limits entirely. The reform also lengthens presidential terms from five to six years and allows candidates to win elections with just a plurality—rather than a majority—of votes, eliminating the need for a runoff.
Most democracies around the world have term limits for their presidents. The Latin American countries that have removed them in recent years—Venezuela through a referendum and Nicaragua through the court, both in 2009—became deeply autocratic.
When Venezuela held the plebiscite to get rid of term limits, it was criticized by some pro-democracy watchdogs. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), would eventually issue an opinion saying that abolishing term limits poses a risk to democracy. In recent years, the IACHR has become quick to issue statements of concern after major episodes of democratic backsliding in the region.
El Salvador “is going down the same path as Venezuela,” Juanita Goebertus, a director at the Human Rights Watch, posted on social media last week. “It starts with a leader who uses their popularity to concentrate power, and then it finishes in a dictatorship.”
The OAS and IACHR have been unusually quiet, however. Member countries’ wariness of antagonizing U.S. President Donald Trump has produced a chilling effect at the OAS, said a senior diplomat familiar with the organization, who spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
The Trump administration has relied on Bukele to accept and detain deportees in a notorious megaprison. The White House this week endorsed El Salvador’s reform, calling it “democratically based and constitutionally sound.” In the past, Washington has condemned extended presidential terms in the region.
Separately, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the U.S. State Department is preparing to sharply reverse its recent criticism of El Salvador’s human rights record in an upcoming report. A draft seen by the Post stated that there are “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in the country.
The United States funds around half of the OAS and is currently reviewing its support, fueling speculation that Trump might leave the organization entirely. The potential end of U.S. backing for the OAS “is being held over the organization’s head like the sword of Damocles,” the diplomat said. Some OAS member states, such as Canada and Mexico, are also still trying to talk Trump down from tariffs.
In addition to the organization’s silence on El Salvador, the OAS has recently held back from denouncing Trump’s threats against Brazil over its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.
On Wednesday, the OAS issued a declaration voicing its commitment to fight climate change. But a handful of countries held back from co-sponsoring—including Brazil, which is hosting the United Nations’ annual climate conference later this year. Most countries from the hemisphere signed on as co-sponsors.
The United States added a footnote to the declaration, calling it “fundamentally flawed” and encouraging the OAS to “focus its time, attention, and resources on matters that all member states can support.”
A potential U.S. exit from the OAS doesn’t just worry diplomats from Latin America and the Caribbean. Frank Mora, a former U.S. ambassador to the body, wrote in Americas Quarterly last week that such a move would make “the U.S. deaf to the hemisphere’s conversations and blind to its crises, while inviting others to write the script”—an implicit nod to China.
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, Aug. 12, to Friday, Aug. 15: Mexico hosts a U.N. conference on the status of women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Sunday, Aug. 17: Bolivia holds general elections.
What We’re Following
Trade tremors. Heightened U.S. tariffs on Latin American countries are already affecting businesses across the region, with Brazil’s coffee exporters and Mexico’s auto manufacturers warning this past week that prices will rise for U.S. consumers. The president of the Mexican Auto Industry Association said the current 25 percent auto tariff on the country is “unsustainable,” including for U.S. companies that rely on inputs from Mexico.
Canadian and Mexican officials held a meeting on Aug. 5 to coordinate trade strategies on Trump’s tariffs. Canada did not receive the same temporary reprieve from levies that Mexico did last week.
Meanwhile, Brazilian officials have been studying the possibility of a critical minerals deal with the United States to de-escalate trade and political tensions. But hostilities spiked again after Brazil’s Supreme Court put Bolsonaro under house arrest for violating a social media ban. Trump has called the court’s trial of Bolsonaro on attempted coup charges “a witch hunt.”
Assisted death diary. A few countries in Latin America allow medically assisted death in certain cases of terminal or severe illness. But even in those countries, accessing the service can be complicated.
A Colombian public health expert raised awareness of those challenges over the past year through a series of newspaper columns that chronicled her own choice of medically assisted death following a cancer diagnosis. In Tatiana Andia’s columns, she “took her country with her,” the New York Times wrote this week.
Andia was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 43 and wrote publicly about what she would—and would not—accept at the end of her life. She fought past stigma and bureaucracy to make her assisted death plan. Andia eventually wrote in her columns that the process was far more complex than she had imagined.
By the time she died in February 2024, writing that she was bowing out “with dignity,” the whole country was following along. Her death was national news.
Brazilian soccer player Marta Vieira da Silva celebrates Brazil’s win over Colombia in the women’s Copa América finals in Quito, Ecuador, on Aug. 2.Franklin Jacome/Getty Images
Women’s Copa América. Ecuador hosted the women’s version of the South American regional soccer tournament over the past month. It culminated in a final match on Aug. 2 between Colombia and Brazil. The two teams fought to a 4-4 tie, which Brazil won in penalty kicks. Both teams have now earned spots at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
The final included some of the most dazzling soccer played in the region this year. Brazil’s Marta, at the twilight of her international career, pushed the game to extra time with a late goal in the second half.
The tournament also highlighted long-standing pay inequities between men and women’s soccer. The team that won the men’s tournament in 2024 collectively received $16 million; this year’s women’s champions won $1.5 million.
Question of the Week
Every women’s Copa América since 2010 has ended with Brazil and Colombia in the top two spots—except for in 2018. Which national team was the runner-up that year?
Chile never played a final match against winner Brazil because the results of the 2018 tournament were determined by points rather than a playoff game.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the Promise of Realism by Daniel Fried
- Tehran’s Wake‑Up Call for Beijing by Grant Rumley and Craig Singleton
- Is China Changing Its Nuclear Launch Strategy? by Tong Zhao
In Focus: COP30 Housing Woes
A man walks past an infrastructure project underway for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, on June 16.Carlos Fabal/AFP via Getty Images
In three months, Brazil will host this year’s U.N. climate conference. It will be a major test of multilateralism in an era when the Trump administration is trying to tear it down.
Right now, however, controversy is swirling around an issue that may appear more logistical: housing.
The event will take place in the Amazonian city of Belém, which has a metropolitan area of some 2.5 million people. The U.N. offers a daily stipend of around $150 for negotiators from poorer countries to be housed. But in recent months, the housing on offer—a mix of hotels and private homes—has been scarce and prohibitively expensive for attendees.
One so-called “love motel” in Belém, which couples typically rent by the hour and which features suggestive decorations such as giant mirrors near the bed, was listed on a rental site as $570 per night rather than its typical price of $6 per hour.
Countries have been urging the Brazilian government to intervene for months. African, Latin American, and small island state negotiators called an emergency meeting last week to consider moving the conference to another city if current prices don’t change. The housing costs in Belém could force them to dramatically shrink their delegations, they said; at its core, the housing issue was about what kind of voices get to be heard at the summit.
Last week, Brazilian authorities launched a platform designed to help find housing in Belém at more reasonable rates. Conference attendees observed some price decreases. The U.N. has scheduled a follow-up meeting on the matter next week.